Uncensored in Declassified CIA Documents "KWBAIL" What Is It?

In declassified CIA document NPIC EVALUATION OF FIRST SIX BLACK SHIELD MISSIONS, there are two uncensored instances of the name of two locations. One is "SPECTRE" and the other is "KWBAIL".
Bottom, page 12:


Top, page 13:


Middle, page 14:


They appear to be locations where processing is done on reconnaissance photos. The thing is, in all of the other mission documents I've read, those processing locations are censored (maybe the same, maybe different). In fact, on the very next page, processing ocations (possibly the same ones) are censored:
Page 15:


Now, the CIA is really bad and inconsistent at censoring documents for some reason. I could give you all sorts of examples, but the one that should be most familiar to you guys is the infamous case of the 17th page of OXCART Reconnaissance of North Vietnam, where "Area 51" is uncensored right in the middle of the page:

(By the way, I've never seen anyone mention this one where they refer to it as "the Area" with a capital 'A')

So, I think "KWBAIL" and "SPECTRE" were supposed to be censored, but that section was missed, and that they are the same processing locations censored everywhere else.
The document was originally created April 17, 1968.

Now, "SPECTRE" could be anything (hopefully not the SPecial Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion from the 1967 James Bond film "You Only Live Twice", preferably the superhero whose comic book series launched in December, 1967 =P).

"KWBAIL", on the other hand, doesn't seem to mean anything. There isn't even a legitimate phonetic pronunciation for it. It is uncensored twice, so it's highly unlikely that it's a typographical error.
I ran it through a bunch of search engines and stuff to see if I could get any hits:
KWBAIL
bing - 0 results
Yahoo! - 0 real results (found random gibberish and lists of every letter combination)
Google - 0 real results (found random gibberish, list of every letter combination, a Chinese site that may harm my computer with a string of random words, and a poorly-OCR'd German book)
slide (images) - 0 results
flickr - 0 results
eBay - 0 results
amazon - 0 results
altavista (images) - 0 results
altavista (videos) - 0 results
YouTube - 0 results
Ask - 0 real results (gibberish)
Acronym Finder - 0 results
Internet Anagram Server - "Walk Bi" and "Aw Bik"
Backwards: LIABWK
One letter down (A-Z wrap): JVAZHK
One letter up (A-Z wrap): LXCBJM
Offset one QWERTY key left (letter key wrap): JQVLUK
Offset one QWERTY key right (letter key wrap): LENSOA
Numbered letters: 11 23 2 1 9 12
Assuming that the person who wrote that document is trying to help Jason Bourne =P, I'll look at those numbers:
11232-1912 is a zip code in Brooklyn, NY.
Typing "11 23 2 1 9 12" into Google maps returned Arli National Park in Burkina Faso.
The first Google Images result for "11 23 2 1 9 12" is the Harry S. Truman Library's Desegregation of the Armed Forces gallery/timeline.

Alright, enough time-wasting with numbers. Anyway, as you can see, I didn't get any real results (unless you think Truman was involved =P). Anyone have any idea what or where "KWBAIL" is?

Kwajalene Island AFB?
2nd line

reply to post by Granite


2nd line where?
Edit: ohhhh, you were doing that thing with the minimum post length thing, weren't you?

Well, I think that's a good one, but is there any reason you believe that? It doesn't really fit the abbreviation, though it is pretty close.

[edit on 7-6-2010 by shmuu]

reply to post by shmuu


Could it be Kuwait?

~Keeper

reply to post by shmuu


They appear to be first prowords identifying an operations specific location. The physical location may and most likely does change, but it's often more the that. Think of address as a state of mind. It's also likely the action word, or activity identifier. The preceding only refers to the type of processing thats involved for a desired result, for film,etc. This kind of thing changes all the time. You would have to have been plugged in at the time to know. The interpretive and actionable address of the intelligence is a higher level and is not for public consumption. Lets just say actionable is how much sh** hits the fan before certain people notice.

According to this site :

roadrunnersinternationale.com...

(S) Once landed back at Kadena, the camera film was removed from the aircraft, boxed, and sent by special plane to the processing facilities. Film from earlier missions was developed at the Eastman Kodak plant in Rochester, New York. By late summer an Air Force Center in Japan carried out the processing in order to place the photointelligence in the hands of American commanders in Vietnam within 24 hours of completion of a BLACK SHIELD mission.

I have never heard of KWBAIL either, but just as a goof, I ran it through the DOD, CIA, FBI, NSA, NASA, and WHITE HOUSE searches. The only hits that came back where from the NSA site, but none of them contained the exact phrase.
I even broke it up in searches: KW BAIL, KWB AIL, KW BA IL

Its a mystery, but I am sure someone knows what it means.

[edit on 7-6-2010 by wheresthetruth]

reply to post by tothetenthpower


Anything's possible, but I doubt they'd take it to Kuwait now, even less likely in the '60s.


To the suggestion of Kwajalein, I found a picture on this site that shows an RB-57F (reconnaissance aircraft) at Kwajalein, so that one more point for it. But, as far as the abbreviation goes, there is Bucholz Army Airfield on Kwajalein. So, kind of a stretch, but what about:

"Kwajalein, Bucholz Airfield Imagery Laboratory"

or something like that?

On using this "1967 .mil kwb vietnam" as a google search, I'm finding a lot of KWB-01, KWB-02, and KWB in a few emails by vietnam deceased... nothing solid yet though

Kodak
Western Electric
Building
Aerial
Intelligence
Laboratory



[edit on 7-6-2010 by dashen]

[edit on 7-6-2010 by dashen]

KWB Great Circle Mapper
AIL airfil military acronym (40 AIL acronyms)

Check it out
www.gcmap.com...
Nice little CIA ad at the top too
Also a link to CIA, that they used for country flags

Wonder if this airbase started out with CIA global mapping, then went public?




[edit on 7-6-2010 by Thermo Klein]

I do not think SPECTRE was a processing place. I do think however that KWBAIL is, and if you look at other documents, you can see it took 34 hours after aircraft touchdown for the film to arrive at the processing location.

So I am guessing that the K has to do with Kodak, and the A, I and L could have to do with airborne imagery labs, but there could be other possibilities for that.

NPIC = National Photographic Interpretation Center

Since SPECTRE recieves reproductions, I think that is an office at the Pentagon, CIA or White House

Several of just a few scans, of alleged documents, on this site I have no problem with.

I am somewhat surprised the resolution was left readable in that optics is somewhat still classified even with old documents.

Your thinking to hard on Area 51. The proper name of Groom Lake would have been used instead. Area 51 is most likely a code name for another base from which the planes and personnel were deployed. Yeah, it plays well with conspiracies now, but Groom Lake was used instead of Area 51 to avoid suspicion.

Originally posted by hinky
Several of just a few scans, of alleged documents, on this site I have no problem with.

I am somewhat surprised the resolution was left readable in that optics is somewhat still classified even with old documents.

Your thinking to hard on Area 51. The proper name of Groom Lake would have been used instead. Area 51 is most likely a code name for another base from which the planes and personnel were deployed. Yeah, it plays well with conspiracies now, but Groom Lake was used instead of Area 51 to avoid suspicion.

No, Groom Lake was not used as a name. Area 51 was used as name by the CIA and Lockheed for the base, that is documented in many places. As far as I know "Groom Lake" has never been any proper or official name for the base.

reply to post by firepilot


You can go all day naming The Air Force's Operating Location Near Groom Lake, Nevada, AKA "Area 51", AKA "the Area", AKA "Watertown Airstrip", AKA "Homey Airport", AKA "Dreamland", AKA "Paradise Ranch:, AKA "The You-Know-Where at The Wink-Wink Nudge-Nudge, Say No More". But I challenge you to find a formal name for KWBAIL =P

I know, I was looking earlier too. the K has to be Kodak, but the other letters are just guesses. I am pretty sure the L has to do with labs or laboratories though.

Kodak Western Electric Building Aerial Intelligence Laboratory

1933 - Kodak and Western Electric jointly commercialized high-speed industrial photography with a high-speed camera, synchronized with an electric timer.

[edit on 7-6-2010 by dashen]

nice list... and uh.. check above ^

Karimunjawa [KWB] airfil [AIL] - currently located under global mapping Great Circle Mapping. I'm guessing started as a pitstop for SR-71 mapping, then turned public. ?

Are you finding the actual KWBAIL on the Kodak website, I didn't see it. It seems pretty right on but if it's not secret why can't we find it?


[edit on 7-6-2010 by Thermo Klein]

reply to post by Thermo Klein


I looked at Karamunjawa Airfield. There's nothing there now. Just a landing strip and a few little support building, the largest only 40 feet across. I can't say if there was ever anything else there, though. There's a small village at the south end of the island and a few houses in between. Furthermore, I couldn't find any reference to the air force or anyone else ever doing anything there. It seems like an awfully remote, out of the way place to go to just to look at some pictures. It's also 1,400 miles almost directly South of Vietnam, so it wouldn't make a very convenient stop, though not out of the question.
I'm not saying it couldn't be it, but it just doesn't seem likely. I don't think AIL is airfield. I've never seen that abbreviation, and that site doesn't even say "airfield" it says "airfil" whatever that is. That site did list some interesting possibilities for AIL, though. Applied Imagery Laboratory, Airborne Instruments Laboratory, and Avionics Integration Laboratory.

By the way, I just want to say, this is an awesome community. I asked this question a little while ago and I've already had a dozen people jump on it, offering all sorts of different perspectives on it, from airfields in the Pacific, to Kodak facilities, to time-specific codenames, and so on. You guys are great at knowing where to look to find leads.

Edit:
Oh, and I didn't think about this, but if it's being delivered by the plane, you need a runway long enough to land an SR-71. I don't think that airstrip would be long enough. *goes to look up landing requirements*

[edit on 7-6-2010 by shmuu]

Well being that it took 34 hours from aircraft touchdown to KWBAIL getting the intel, and that Kodak did the processing for some time, and with the Kodak link that was posted, I think its pretty definitive that KWBAIL was a Kodak lab used for developing the film

And it was just a matter of hours after KWBAIL getting the film, that SPECTRE was getting the first reproductions in hand.